Oh….AND KEEP THEM STOCKED, if you run out of an item 2 weeks into the season reorder them, empty shelves don’t make you any money! How hard is that for a manager to understand?
Very often this issue is NOT the fault of the store, but rather at the hands of distributors. There are only so many distributors across the country. Distributors don’t want to warehouse anything anymore or have limited space for having orderable tackle thru the season. Distributors host buying shows twice a year: once in the fall for open water tackle and once in the spring for ice tackle. Manufacturers have their booths and sales people handy for the large company buyers as well as anyone that sells tackle from a private store or shop that uses this particular vendor. Each store/shop’s buyers or agents visit the different manufacturers and order based on what they think the next year will demand. Those manufacturers go home and make what the total is on all the orders for that distributor’s show. Those orders are drop shipped to each business and in the case of someone like Scheels, that drop shipment goes to a shipping depot where the product gets dispensed thru out the stores. Generally there isn’t any surplus to re-fill shelves unless that company orders more than what it usually placed in stores at season’s beginning and warehouses themselves or another store has an excess that they can help out with….which means when a store’s rack or peg is empty, its probably going to stay that way for a while, but its not that store’s fault. If a distributor can’t help out, the store has to try the manufacturer, but their buying strength is not with manufacturers. Individuals can order from manufacturers on-line if they want to pay the higher prices and crazy shipping costs.
If a person wants to lay blame for empty shelves or pegs, blame corporate buyers and corporate level retail management along with the cozy arrangement between the distributors and manufacturers. The shows each fall and spring serve one good in that they showcase what’s new for the next year and that’s about it.
As someone has already alluded to, the foot print for full shelves of popular tackle is costly. But as sport people we all know that what’s hot at season’s start can stall in a heartbeat and the last things any retailer wants is carry-over stock that’s basically dead weight. For water-fowlers and the shotshell unavailability, the amount of room several pallets of shotgun shells takes up is perhaps viewed as wasted space when more profitable products can use the same space and make far more money. Sad, but reality.
Still, something not in stock may not be the store’s or department manager’s fault at all.